So I have been discussing with a few of my older colleagues around what we see happening in the IT field and we have come to a general consensus that in our beloved line of work, we are slowly losing our motivation. Not because there is a lack of work or that the pay isn’t good or even that the workplace itself is not a nice place to be. Those parts of the job have gotten a ton better over the years. Working as an IT professional is a pretty good career and for the most part, a rewarding way of spending our time while we are away from our families for 8-10 hours a day.

But the motivation to excel, the drive to be creative, the will to consider the possibilities has greatly decreased over the years. Today because if the rush of technology, everyone is an expert. Everyone now has a smart phone and so therefore they “know IT”. Yet most rarely understand the complexity of IT and from an enterprise standpoint most have a very small view of what IT is.

Back in the days when I wrote code for a living, I thrived on being able to create and discover ways to get things done. I sort of fell into the field but had always been fascinated with the ability to build and create things from seemingly nothing.  At the time there were far fewer canned options for development. Windows 98 and NT were not quite as pretty but very functional. Terms such mobile, eCommerce, content management, and scalable platforms did not exist or were at the very least, just beginning to be understood. There was not a thought that one day we watch movies and listen to music we did not own or have a copy of. So for the most part we were forced to be a lot more creative. Website WYSWYG tools were just starting to take shape and required at least a base understanding of HTML to build a website. To be in IT meant you had to learn a little about “a lot” of key areas just to make even the simplest programs or systems function.

If you consider the places we are today with social media, global search, application development and network connectivity we have come a long way at a very fast pace because of those original “nerdy guys” in the field of IT.

In my early days, there was a bit of elitism to working in IT.  System admins were either these weird bearded guys who did not say much and sometimes wore the same clothes for days or guys still wearing members only jackets from the 80’s. But when it came to understanding multiple ways to parse data or to connect disparate systems, these guys knew their stuff. They held the keys to the castle and you had to know the password to even get close to them. Before we had SDLC, ITIL and the whole host of controlling mechanisms we had common sense, practical use and respect for one another’s contribution.

Not saying it was all good and we did not need to evolve and grow. We did! The “cowboy” mentality of most IT shops is what brought about these control points and processes to be implemented. Allowing for the field of IT to encompass roles like Business Analyst, Project Manager and Customer Service, brought the level of professionalism up and the overall “IT arrogance factor” to a more reasonable place. It also allowed guys like me that are not system engineers or admins to be able to learn and grow and develop a deep appreciation for both technical acumen and business savvy.

But in my opinion we may have swung the pendulum a bit too far and have put more stock in the controls than the actual technology they are designed to “support”. Things like SOX and general IT controls around security and change management are good. In fact, without these controls it would have been difficult to accomplish what we have in the past 10 years. But when the focus is more on the process and control mechanisms and not the actual application or deliverable, creativity, cycle time to production and our ability to provide a value added service to our companies or customers decreases. If we truly want IT to continue to “push the boundaries” especially in the corporate world, we have to figure out how we can still have controls but allow for those “Zuckerberg’s” that are just now coming up to be able to create and move the technology bar.

I hope that anyone that reads this (all 200 of my followers :)) does not miss the point here. I am not saying that all folks in management or those in the field of IT “really” don’t get it. A lot do. There are a large group of folks that not only get it, but embrace, in fact love… that they can actually write the necessary scripts, build or design an application or install and configure the system on their own without the help of wizard or framework application to build it for them. They may not be able to build a nice PowerPoint deck on a particular technology subject, but their value to an organization is high.

Not everyone will agree with me on this but as I continue to try to push myself to learn new things (and there is a lot out there I still have no clue about…) I want those silent tech geeks to step up and be heard again.  I recall a recent conversation where it was stated “we do not need people that understand technology in IT, we need more leaders.” I tend to agree on part of that statement. We do indeed need more leaders. But those leaders MUST understand the technology past their five slide PowerPoint deck. They MUST be able to make the proper assessments and integration decisions required to move the industry or their respective companies forward. They MUST listen to their technology staff and make their opinions more valuable for key decisions. Management used to be the best and brightest in their particular disciplines.

Today we have a large majority of folks in IT that have no clue how all this evolved and have not had the opportunity to “get their hands dirty” in developing any of the technologies or systems they now support. It’s not to say they can’t learn. They can. In fact there is not a technology, development language, system theory or IT space that can’t be deeply understood if there is a willingness to learn. Our managers can get all the information they need. I will give you a clue start with “google”!

From the CIO to the level one analyst, we need to push the pendulum back towards technology and away from just a surface understanding of how all this stuff works. As leaders we need to be able to make “connections”.  So will the real technologists please stand up?